


Inversions

by Envoy



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Denial, First Time, Fluff, Foreshadowing, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Longing, M/M, Roughness, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, belfast charter, lovelorn Juice, makes what happens next more tragic, pre-tragedy, real IRA, se03ep11 Bainne, se04ep03 Dorylus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-25 19:40:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2633828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guileless, they were, quite unlike any eyes she knew. She had spent her whole life knowing Catholic eyes; inward looking, remorse tempered by shrewdness. These were not Catholic eyes. Not Irish eyes. Lovely in their own way, but transparent as a shallow pond.</p><p>
  <em>'People see me all the time and they just can’t remember how to act</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I couldn’t believe after all these years, you didn’t know me any better than that'</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mná na h-Éireann

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What really happened when Chibs sent Juice to guard his wife and daughter during their stay with the Belfast Charter? The people Chibs loves and what they say behind his back.

_While in the merry month of May, from me home I started_   
_Left the girls of Tuam nearly brokenhearted_   
_Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother_   
_Drank a pint of beer, me grief and tears to smother_

_Then off to reap the corn and leave where I was born_   
_Cut a stout blackthorn to banish ghosts_   
_And goblin' brand new pair of brogues to rattle o'er the bogs_   
_And frighten all the dogs on the rocky road to Dublin'_

\- The Rocky Road To Dublin

 

Fiona stood in the doorway, arms crossed against her chest, watching the boy playing her daughter at cards. He was quiet, studious, unobtrusive. He glanced up and saw her, gave a nervous smile she didn’t bother to return. She didn’t think it would occur to him to do anything as covert as let Kerrianne win. Fuck it, they must be near the same age anyway. Frowning and laying his cards out before him, he made some kind of pun on having the runs that prompted a reluctant laugh from Kerrianne, haunted as she always looked these days. God knows the girl needed a laugh. A wide genuine smile broke across his face. It was transformative.

She was still making up her mind about his eyes. Guileless, they were, quite unlike any eyes she knew. She had spent her whole life knowing Catholic eyes; inward looking, remorse tempered by shrewdness. These were not Catholic eyes. Not Irish eyes. Lovely in their own way, but transparent as a shallow pond. Kerrianne smiled back, but Fiona waited for her to offer him tea, waited for her gentle steps to leave the room, and then still waited, just enough.

‘You love him, don’t you?’

‘What?’ His head snapped up as if he’d been scalded.

‘You heard me boy.’

‘I dunno– what– you mean Chibs?’ _Lord, stop my eyebrows climbing too far up my face._ His words tumbled over each other. ‘Yeah, I guess, I mean, we’re brothers. I’ve got his back, we all have, that’s– that’s why I’m here.’ She allowed the words to hang in the air, gaining weight, until he was forced to hang his head, abashed.

‘Is there, um, anything to drink around here? I haven’t...’

She nodded.

‘I brought some brandy. Cupboard. Help yourself.’ He brought back an extra glass and Fiona accepted it from him, sitting down at the tiny wooden table.

‘Sit down, by Christ, I won’t bite.’ She recoiled from the look on his face, ‘And for goodness sake don’t look so grave, no one’s dead. Yet.’

Juice smiled slightly sheepishly, and downed a large measure of brandy with obvious relief.

‘Where I grew up, I thought that was tough man.’ Welcome to the bleeding homeland, she thought, watching him reach into his pocket for a baggy. ‘You mind?’

‘Knock yourself out.’

He’d paid them a compliment of sorts, and try as she might she couldn’t make out an agenda in the boy. She guessed he at least had some experience of the trials faced by a sometime single mother, might’ve asked if this had been anything like a heart-to-heart. Sipping slowly, she watched him rolling up a joint, contemplating the youth of his face, the all-American haircut, and wondered at the worlds between them.

‘Does he know?’ He just stared at her with wide uncomprehending eyes. She supposed it was endearing; she’d never met a son so naively taken in by his own bullshit. Fiona nodded again, satisfied. She knocked back the last of her brandy and poured another, softening her voice. The poor lad was shaken enough.

‘He’s a good guy, Juice, a really good guy. I suppose you know that. An absent father, but a good man.’

He was quiet for a bit, unguarded.

‘Yeah, I know.’

-

 

They played reels and jigs and ballads a little too loud, ostensibly for the purpose of giving a foreign son a history lesson but really they all knew they were drowning out the low perennial hum of alarm. Fiona circled the small rug with Kerrianne in her arms, both tipsy from the drinks they’d carried on through tea time. Then Kerrianne beckoned Juice, returning from a check of the area. She span around with him, laughing and giving it his all but nearly knocking a side table over. Fiona remarked that it was how they kept the cold at bay and could tell he was unsure if she was serious.

His pleasant bemusement was welcome, lightening the air of the evening, usually bland and harsh. A lot of people were less confident making eye contact with Fiona, and she had to make some allowances for him now, after all.

-

 

Chibs took Fiona in his arms.

‘Hiya darlin’.’ She closed her eyes for just a moment to take in the familiar scent of leather.

‘And you, come over here.’ Kerrianne walked across from the back of the room with less hesitation than she’d had a week before, to meet her father’s embrace. ‘How’re ma girls?’

‘We’re fine, Filip.’

‘And ah’m very glad to hear it’ he said, striding into the room, ‘but not as glad as ah am to see this brandy.’

‘Juice.’ Finally Chibs moved over to where Juice had been hanging back politely, grasping his kutte and pulling him into a cursory but meaningful hug, clapping him on the back. ‘Thanks, brother.’

‘No problem.’

‘So, while you’ve been comfortably set up here,’ he picked up the bag on the table and raised his eyebrows to Juice, ‘smoking on the job, we’ve had a very hairy few days.’ Chibs was smiling warmly as he began to fill him in on the situation, Juice solemn, rapt, head inclined towards him to catch all he said. Fiona wondered if Chibs had any idea how unquestioningly this lad would follow him.

Their goodbyes were amiable but strained with the knowledge that they were likely to be the last for a long while. Juice, to his credit, became inconspicuous very well, disappearing from the intimate family scene gathered about the table. As they were leaving, she took him aside. ‘Take care. Thanks, for watching over us. We both appreciate it.’

‘C’mon lad, you wanna get left behind or what?’ Juice gave Fiona an apologetic smile and let Chibs manhandle him out of the front door.

She stood back for a good while after she had watched as her husband walked away with his arm around a younger man’s shoulder. Was it really possible? Stranger things had happened in Fiona Larkin’s lifetime.

_One, two, three four, five_   
_Hunt the hare and turn her down the rocky road_   
_And all the way to Dublin', whack-fol-la-de-da_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked up deleted scenes after I wrote this, and found that Juice really did play cards with Kerrianne under Fiona’s watchful gaze. All the more reason that the rest of it should be true.


	2. Songs of Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of Stockton.
> 
> 'And draw us near  
> And bind us tight  
> All your children here  
> In their rags of light'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 4 Episode 1 Out

_from this broken hill I will sing to you_   
_from this broken hill_

_if there is a choice_  
 _let the rivers fill_  
 _let the hills rejoice_  
\- If it be your will

 

‘Good to see yeh again lad.’

Juice grins.

‘Good to be back, brother.’ Chibs moves deliberately out from behind his bike, grasping Juice’s shoulder with a gloved hand. They hug carefully, gently, without all the formality of club business. The press of buttons against his chest, the warmth through Chibs’ hoodie, eases all the tension from Juice. ‘I missed you, man’ he murmurs stupidly, not even thinking it until the smell of bourbon and motor oil is in his nostrils. It’s Chibs, though, so he just grins against his shoulder at his own loose tongue. Chibs chortles and gives him a shove.

‘One too many, Juicy boy, yer becoming maudlin.’ He looks like he might pull him back across the step he’s taken backward, but Juice feels a bit doped, his reactions slowed.

‘Yeah,’ he pats the leather seat of his ride, ‘must be time to hit the road.’ Throwing Chibs a smile, he takes his helmet from the handlebars and turns it in his hands, unsure why this pause is stretching out so uneasily.

‘Nah, don’t, don’t go yet.’ There’s something emotional in the Scotsman’s voice that turns him around. Chibs is just a dark figure standing there in the shadows. A great spark of longing cuts through from Juice’s thigh to his abdomen, and his chest judders.

‘Chibs?’ He reaches tentatively out in the dark and puts a palm against his chest.

‘I’m no feeling too perky, just, c’mere eh?’

‘Yeah, man, of course.’ He slides his palm up and around to the back of Chibs’ neck, allowing himself to be pulled in slowly with a hand on the small of his back. His eyes drift closed to the rise and fall of their chests, absentmindedly running his fingers over Chibs’ shoulder blades. The brief embrace outside the gates of Stockton, the confines of the truck that night with them and Bobby, the whole day beside Chibs rushes by at once without simple human contact. Warm whisky soaked breath against Juice’s neck starts to unravel him, all his muscles slackening, letting go of the feeling of a gun in his hands.

A chink of light and a dragging shuffle of movement don’t break them apart.

‘You okay there lovebirds?’ Bobby coughs a phlegmy cloud of smoke into the night, illuminated from behind with his lips around a cigar like some hideous visitation. ‘Not careful you’ll get pissed on, loitering in the dark.’

‘Fuck off!’ Chibs hollers, the change in volume right next to his left ear shocking Juice into laughter, ‘didn’t yeh mammy tell yeh not to mess with a drunk Scot?’

 

_Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press._   
_Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out quick but when they will I can only guess._


	3. Inversions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember that time Chibs spent the day incapacitated on a table and had to get taken to the clinic to clear his passages?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set near the beginning of Season 4, around the time of Episode 3 Dorylus. Juice has been in and out of Stockton, has just been picked up for the first time and shown the file. He and Chibs return to the workshop where they made the crates for the coke.

_If the wild bird could speak_   
_She'd tell of places you had been_   
_She's been in my dreams_   
_And she knows all the ways of the wind_

 

Chibs’s hoarse laugh goes dry in his throat. Juice coughs, rubs the back of his neck, looks at the floor.

‘Do ya think we can?’ His eyes are wide and scared. He has his hand in the fabric at Chibs’ neck.

Panting hard and fast, he forces himself in front of Chibs, locking his eyes with open innocence though Chibs doesn’t want to look, pushes him back against the cabinet.

 

_Polly, come home again_   
_Spread your wings to the wind_   
_I felt much of the pain_   
_As it begins_

 

‘Oh fuck, Juice.’ Chibs is sprawled on his back on the worktable, staring at the ceiling, his eyes filling with tears. ‘You canna do tha’...’ but the warmth coiling in his solar plexus says otherwise. Juice gently grinds his hips against him, barely touching, and again. ‘Shi-it oh Christ fuck like tha’.’ The wobble in his voice surprises him. Juice’s slow bearing down is not nearly enough and is happening much too fast. A tear slips from the corner of his eye and runs down into his hair. He looks down at the olive strip of stomach below Juice’s t-shirt where the top of his boxers show above his jeans and throws his head back with a groan.

Grasping his hips produces a soft ‘nnh’ from Juice that is unbelievably filthy and he leans into the support as Chibs steadies him and bucks up clumsily. Has to hold on long enough to hear more sounds like that.

‘Chibs?’ It grates across the back of his neck, his scalp tingles with sensitivity, all his hairs standing up.

‘Say ma name.’ Through gritted teeth, his voice gone to sandpaper, pressing his eyes closed. Skin anticipates the sound of Juice that's liltingly light but breathy all at once.

He hisses, whispers it, and Chibs moans.

Finally he looks away from the ceiling. Juice’s eyes are hooded, drowsy and shiny with lust. Chibs misses a breath, he’s either going to cum or vomit.

Juice’s hand is pushed up under his back, his thumb is rubbing Chibs’ coccyx and paralyzing shots of pleasure spike up his spine. God help him, not five minutes and all his clothes on. He’s gone numb, he can’t move.

‘Mary mother o’ Christ. _Juicy_.’

When white flashes behind his eyes against all his wishes he sees a negative of Juice’s face, coloured different by want.

Somehow Juice follows him by seconds. Shaking, Chibs watches him spasm, clutching at Chibs’ shirt with balled fists. He lets out a quiet gasp that tugs at Chibs’ abdomen like a fish hook.

They collapse, Juice boneless and heavy on top of him. It’s difficult to breathe but he’s riding the light headedness, and Juice is warmer and more solid than he’s used to.

He feels exhausted, rubbing a hand over his eyes. They sting. There’s sawdust in his hair.

‘What the fuck are we doin’?’

Juice turns his face towards him. ‘Come back to mine?’ he murmurs softly, ‘I’ll make you dinner.’

Chibs opens his mouth, in a flush of anger unable to speak, and shakes his head in disbelief.

‘What do you think this is?’ Shoving him away and ignoring the clatter of Juice managing not to fall off the table, he stands up, but his legs nearly give way and he has to lean against another bench to light up.

‘Nuthin. I just. Not like _dinner_. Just, dinner. You’re right, it’s stupid.’

He can hear the noncommittal shrug in his shoulders, the small tilt of his head, the 'I dunno man' purse of his lips. Daft boy. A long peaceful interval stretches out during which Chibs lets the nicotine level him out a little. He perches on a worktop corner across the room, closes his eyes, inhales deep, just the smoulder of flame and the suck of his lungs.

‘You work one out with other blokes a lot then?’

Juice’s patiently watchful eyes flicker away, his face falls.

‘... No.’

Chibs goes tender at the sight of him, leaning on his elbows with his chin in his chest. He goes over and cradles the back of Juice’s head.

‘S’alright lad, I won’t say anything. Wouldna do me any good, would it?’ Now Juice’s eyes are sparkling with emotion, and Chibs’ chest constricts. Was he too harsh? ‘Hey now. Was just a stressful day, I know.’ Poor lad can’t have got his rocks off with anyone for months, he thinks. He feels a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

‘Yeh couldn’t possibly feed me anyway, boy. What’ll yeh be having? Mungbean salad?’

Juice catches the tone and looks up, his easy smile lifting the side of his mouth. His face is still flushed and shiny and - _glowing_ \- and Chibs almost has to catch his breath again.

‘Fuck off.’

 

_Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats_   
_Blowing through the letters that we wrote_   
_Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves_   
_We’re idiots, babe_   
_It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juice's confronting Chibs, standing there like a challenge: 'what are you gonna do', is supposed to poignantly echo with later in the Season when he offers himself up for the beating.


	4. Lone Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Club's gonna vote him out. No one's gonna trust him... But you do?'
> 
> 'Let me... let me watch him for a while, figure him out, find out where he's really at.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Around Season 4 Episode 9 Kiss. Lyrics from Bob Dylan's Idiot Wind again.

 

_I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike_

_I haven’t known peace and quiet for so long I can’t remember what it’s like_

_There’s a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pourin’ out of a boxcar door_

_You didn’t know it, you didn’t think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars_

_After losin’ every battle_

 

 

He laid the spanner down on the table in the garage and threw a cautious glance at Juice, hovering by the doors, in the torpor of someone who has given up on individual agency and merely awaits his orders. Chibs' ever alert gaze was wandering, distracted. He exhaled hard through his nose. Fuck it.

‘I have to ask you somethin’ else.’ He wiped his hands with a rag and watched him sidelong for his reaction. It landed like a lead weight as he knew it would. ‘Did it have anythin’ to do wi’ me?’

‘It’s not on you Chibs.’

The silence was deafening. Chibs’ natural reaction was to raise his voice just a little, making sure Juice got every carefully measured word loud and clear across the empty garage. ‘There’s somethin’ goin’ on wi’ you, Juice, and I know yer not goin’ to tell me, but you have _got_ to meet me halfway because last week, that’s _before_ yeh took yer little trip to the woods...’ Chibs’ eyes were sharp and lips instinctively drew back from his teeth when he saw his venom start to melt Juice’s resolve, ‘before yer midnight stroll down at Oswald's... you pinned me to a table and got me off quicker than Mairi Campbell puttin’ her mouth round ma cock when ah was fifteen.’

He was advancing on him now, the rag in one hand, not giving a rat’s arse that he had barely ever seen Juice so uncomfortable, like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him.

‘You may have forgotten but I sure as fuck haven’t.’

He wavered with Chibs right in front of him, cringing a little but unmoving in front of the pillar. That’s right; he could keep up his turn-the-other-cheek Jesus bullshit with Chibs standing right there.

‘What do yeh expect me to do? Pretend it never happened?’ Juice's silence so clearly said, yes; just ignore the elephant in the room. ‘Well yeh’ve made that very fucking hard now, haven’t yeh?’

His lowered head only inches away and still he wouldn’t look at him. Chibs' searched that face, for something.

‘Is it what you want?’

Pause. ‘I just want to get back to-’

Chibs grabbed him roughly by the neck of his t-shirt. ‘ _Is it- what you want_?’

Juice visibly flinched, their eyes met for one raw moment.

‘Yes. Yeah. I want it.’

He held on for one long second before letting him drop and turning sharply on his heel, pacing back to the rear of the garage. Juice stared at the back of his shoulders. He tinkered with the tools on the table in silence for so long it began to seem as if he wouldn’t answer. When he did, his voice was so low it might have been meant only for himself.

‘I love you, Juicy. But I don’t know if I can do tha’’

‘Yeah. I’ve, uh, I’ve gotta go.’

Before he’d fully turned around Juice was striding out of the clubhouse and swinging a leg over his bike.

‘ _Juice!_ Fer fuck sake.’ He slammed the spanner onto the worktop with a ringing crash. He was sick and fucking tired of shouting at his back.

 

 

 

_Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped_

_What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top_

_You’re on the bottom_


	5. Nothin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chibs knows something about lying by ommission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Townes Van Zandt, Nothin'.

_As brothers our troubles are_

_Locked in each others arms_

_And you better pray_

_They never find you_

_Your back ain't strong enough_

_For burdens doublefold_

_They'd crush you down_

_Down into nothin'_

 

 

 

He was sure Chibs’ head wasn’t in the game today. Whole time they’d been talking his contributions had been directed at the middle distance and he’d spent more time watching Juice with careful eyes and nursing a spot on his back.

‘You ok, brother?’

‘Aye. Bruise.’

‘Somethin’ happen the other night?’

The Scotsman’s sharp eyes flicked towards him.

‘No. I’ve got this, Jackie, yeah?’

‘A’ight. Ok. Jus’ checkin up brother.’

Chibs nodded. When Jax eventually stopped looking at him and sloped off he cursed lightly under his breath. Boy’s dead-eyed face now had Chibs feeling the dent of a table saw in his back. This was bad.

 

-

_Being born is going blind_

_And bowing down a thousand times_

_To echoes strung_

_On pure temptation_

 

 

It was a sparse and sour get-together that night, the few guys present determinedly losing the tension in cheap spirits and cheap laughs. Chibs’ nose was thick with the tart salt of pussy and his hand half up the stockinged skirt of the girl on the next bar stool when Juice passed, following some dark haired crow eater into the back of the clubhouse.

The lights had been hit, and there could have been anyone in the back room and it made sense that Juice had struggled out of his leather, t-shirt and jeans. Just happened to be him and Chibs who collided. Who fell against something in the dark with whiplash greed, unchecked and blind, Chibs all fists and fury. In between the sounds of the club getting friendly with various girls, of hollering and breaking glass, it was just skin bare on Chibs’ kutte. Juice groaned, low and coarse in his throat. Instead of stopping he opened his chest and screamed hoarsely and they better bloody hope the party covers up the crashes of them. Bass vibrated through the tendons in his legs pressed against Juice’s, hot bare thighs tightening around him. Juice’s torso twisted away from Chibs who held them together as he slammed him backwards into the table, crashing it against the wall.

When Juice spoke it was weak and sore, shouted out. ‘Get the fuck off me man.’

His hair was suddenly in sweaty strings in front of his eyes and all he could see was the curve of Juice’s neck. He grabbed his upper arms, fingertips digging into muscle, and pressed them against the corner of the table. Juice gasped. Since when did his need to punish the boy have so much sex in it? There was, undeniably, the heaviness in his breath, his closeness to Juice wearing almost nothing, the racing of his blood just under the surface. In the dim light he could just make out Juice’s eyes, shocked and wary. Shit.

‘Don’t push, brother.’

What’d he done? Chibs was mortified, his pulse thrumming in his ears. ‘Yah... yah, ok. I-I’m sorry.’ He backed away, against the wall.

‘Don’t need to push.’

‘Ah’m sorry, Juice.’ Where in god’s name was that girl? Had the door even been closed? Juice was wrestling himself to his feet with a wince. He shrugged his kutte back on painfully over bare chest. In the gloom the skin on his flanks and legs glowed faintly silver in the light from outside as he approached, but held back. Chibs’ pulse was beating in his temples as his brain caught up with Juice’s words. He ran a harassed hand back through his hair, stalling. The words were a bitch to get out – caught up on his tongue, clogging his throat.

‘And. If ah asked?’

There was a heavy migraine-like interval before Juice’s soft voice reached him across the space. ‘I’m here.’

‘Can ah-’ He reached out for the roughness of Juice’s face. Juice swallowed thickly.

‘Yeah.’

Chibs sucked in a breath and shook his head at the floor with a small incredulous huff. Couldn’t believe what he was thinking of saying.

A choked laugh escaped from Juice. Chibs was grateful for the levity because the intensity between them now was near claustrophobic. Both his hands clasped Juice’s head and Juice’s palms were sliding up his arms when the door slammed open.

They leapt apart and the darkness _must_ probably have covered them.

‘Anyone in there?’ Happy blinked.

‘Aye. We’re fine. Jus’ rescuin’ Juice from stickin’ it where it would be unwise to stick it.’ Chibs threw a jovial arm round the boy's shoulders.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Juice nodded meekly in assent.

‘Ok.’ Happy eyed up Juice's state of undress sceptically. ‘Jax wants you up front.’

Juice was left struggling into his jeans while Chibs followed Happy back to the bar at a brisk pace. Not that anyone noticed or gave a crap. He watched his club from the corridor, thinking he'd join them soon. They didn't need him now. He'd join them soon.

 

 

_Hey mama, when you leave_

_Don't leave a thing behind_

_I don't want nothin'_

_I can't use nothin'_


End file.
